This is not a trick question: which country has won the most FIFA World Cup titles in the last half century?

The obvious and correct answer is the United States.

The reason America is such a football powerhouse is largely due to a 37-word piece of legislation referred to as Title IX. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed the Education Amendment which prohibited sex discrimination in any educational programme receiving federal financial aid. Over the last 50 years, the law has helped increase women’s access to higher education, bolstered medical funding for women’s health, and given legal backing for fights against sexual harassment. But one of its most unexpected and visible effects has been in the field of women’s .

Girls growing up in a pre-Title IX world had far fewer opportunities to play organised sports. Most school athletics budgets went almost entirely to boys, with girls’ teams receiving a fraction of the funding and facilities available to their male counterparts. In 1972, only around 7% of high school athletes were female. By 2019, that figure had risen to 43% of high school girls participating in sports.

Women’s participation did not stop at high school. Between 1982 and 2020, the percentage of women among NCAA college athletes grew from 28% to 44%. The benefits of playing sports can also continue long after women graduate and enter the workforce. A 2015 survey found that nine out of ten female C-suite executives had played sports in school, suggesting a connection between access to athletics and gaining the confidence to pursue career goals.

While remarkable, the trajectory of Title IX has not been straightforward. Since it became law, conservative lawmakers and other opponents have repeatedly tried to abolish or amend provisions protecting women’s access to sports. Immediately after its passage, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms proposed legislation that would have restricted Title IX to situations in which athletics were a mandatory part of an institution’s curriculum. In 1984, the Supreme Court temporarily limited the scope of the law, before Congress restored its broader application in 1988.

Despite these battles, the expansion of opportunities for women athletes has been dramatic. Since Title IX became law, American women have become a dominant force in international sports competitions. At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, women won 67 of the United States’ 126 medals. If American women had competed as their own country, they would have ranked third in the medal table, behind the full US team and China.

The growth of women’s sport is now increasingly visible beyond the Olympics. Over the last fifty years, women’s professional teams and leagues have grown in popularity and commercial value. In 2025, revenue for the WNBA topped $300 million, up from $250 million the previous year. Growing interest in women’s sports, however, has not translated into equal paycheques. The maximum WNBA salary in 2025 was $250,000. If WNBA players were compensated at a rate comparable to the highest-paid professional male basketball players, that figure would be closer to $4 million.

That gap is an important reminder of what Title IX did, and what it did not do. The law did not create equality across every part of women’s sport overnight. Private companies continue to sponsor male athletes at higher rates than women. Drop into any sports bar on a Friday night in the US, and most of the screens will still show professional male leagues. But the law did fundamentally change who was entitled to an opportunity to play sports in the first place. By making sex discrimination in federally-funded education unlawful, Title IX forced institutions to open doors that had previously been closed or only partly open to girls and women.

The lasting impact of Title IX is therefore not simply the number of medals won or the millions now generated by women’s leagues. It is evidence that legislation can change behaviour, institutions and, eventually, culture. Before Title IX, it was possible for schools to treat girls’ sports as an afterthought. Today, for millions of American children, playing football, basketball or running track is an ordinary part of growing up regardless of gender. The law did not guarantee that every girl would become an elite athlete, nor did it eliminate inequality from sport. But by requiring institutions to provide opportunities more equally, it helped create the conditions in which a generation of women athletes could emerge.

What the legislation shows is that equality does not always happen simply because society changes its mind. Sometimes brave legislators have to step in to create the opportunities for equality to grow. The rules change first, and a generation later the results follow.

[KK1]Does athletics only refer to track and field or across all sports?